This Monday 19 March at 8pm, there will be holding a series of coordinated NHS Vigils, across the UK to draw attention to the importance of halting the Tory NHS Bill. Everyone interested in peacefully registering their opposition to the NHS Bill is welcome to attend (DETAILS BELOW). The purpose of the meetings is to [...]
Posts Tagged ‘NHS’
The gold I want to go for
Mar 8th, 2012 by Len McCluskey.My call for civil disobedience around the time of the Olympic Games caused a media storm last week. Nick Clegg was “gobsmacked”. David Cameron called me “unpatriotic”. I couldn’t care less about their criticism. Clegg is busy dismantling the legacy of those great Liberals Keynes and Beveridge, the architects of the welfare state and full [...]
Full steam ahead with a commercialised public services Britain
Jan 20th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.There could not be a clearer signal that the ultimate goal of this Tory government (forget the Coalition myth) is the full-scale commercialisation of all Britain’s public services than the latest plan to bring in the credit-rating agencies to monitor and control NHS hospitals. This is taking the country back to pre-1948 when finance, not [...]
Hinchingbrooke hospital: lessons of Southern Cross
Nov 15th, 2011 by David Osler.Southern Cross became a FTSE 250 company on the back of the profits it made from looking after the elderly. Earlier this year it realised that it could no longer afford the rent on the care homes it once owned, but had sold off and leased back. Unlike most business models that don’t pan out, [...]
Slow-motion breakdown across our public services
Nov 15th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The real Border Agency scandal is not whether Theresa May or Brodie Clark authorised the relaxation of checks on millions of visitors over the summer, but rather that job cuts and expenditure squeezes are cutting swathes through the immigration rules. In the last fortnight it has been disclosed (and one wonders how much else has [...]
UK Uncut to shut down Westminster Bridge in protest over NHS bill
Sep 23rd, 2011 by Jon Lansman.Thousands are expected to occupy one of London’s most iconic landmarks on 9th October in last-ditch attempt to defeat the bill condemned by doctors as ‘undermining all that is precious about the NHS’. UK Uncut has announced that it is planning a spectacular act of mass civil disobedience in a last-ditch attempt to defeat the [...]
The five lies in the NHS bill
Sep 7th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.Despite the unctuous assurances from the Government, repeated again yesterday at the Report stage of Lansley’s bill, that the NHS would be preserved, on 5 key counts the content of the bill flatly belies their pledges: First they said that private patients should not be able to jump the queue. Yet clause 168 of the [...]
The NHS bill descends from tragedy into farce
Sep 6th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.The handling of the NHS and Social Care Bill, which returns to the Commons today, must be the most cynical, manipulative and dishonest of any bill in modern times. It was sprung on an unsuspecting nation after an election in which no mention was made of it in any manifesto and an air-brushed Cameron ad [...]
NHS: how is out-of-control government to be checked?
Sep 4th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.Lansley’s NHS Bill which returns to the Commons next week still, even after the ‘pause’, raises acute issues of accontability. Whilst some of the more extreme proposals have been slightly modified, the fundamental underlying ideology remains intact. It will still lead to irrevocable break-up of the NHS by opening it up to unlimited privatisation. This [...]
The battle for the NHS is far from over
Jun 14th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.So after Prof Steve Field’s emollient smoothing of the jagged edges of Lansley’s health privatisation fetish, that’s now all done and dusted then? Almost certainly not. The Lansley bill is just the latest in a long line of attempts to wrest the NHS out of the public sector and place it firmly, like every other [...]
